Nandita Raman

Vidisha Saini is an artist who grew up in the 90s in India. She likes to queer utopia, colonialism, gender, and history. Saini works with alter-egos (Fadescha), satire, tourism, memory, hyper-text and other performative mediums. She social as well as anti-social. Vidisha‘s recent works include “You Might Be Discorvered”, LAST Projects (LA), ‘Building On Ruins’, Cirrus Gallery (LA), ‘A Bomb With Ribbon Around It’, Queens Museum of Art (NY). Saini holds a MFA in Photography & Media, and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts, CA.

Kay Walkowiak lives and works in Vienna. He studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna, photography and video art at the Academy of fine Arts, Vienna and art & communication and sculture & multimedia art at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He has received several grants and awards such as Artist in Residence Grant Banff(2014), Beijing(2013), Varaansi (2013), Theodor Körner Preis (2010), Otto Prutscher award (2008), Fred Adlmüller scholarship (2006).

Rony Maltz is a photographer, writer, bookmaker based in Rio de Janerio. He received a Master’s degree in Fine Art Photography from ICP-Bard program in New York City. Rony recently completed a long term video project on the sinking city of Atafona in Brazil.

Threads can be long and winding, in fact it can be an effort to keep them straight. They tie things together and they also get into perplexing entanglements. Conversations are threads sometimes, where surprising connections are possible. Instead of writing about art, I feel the more urgent question is how to live an examined life as an artist? It’s an old question but hopefully not a redundant one. In the course of two months, I will invite artists to talk about what nurtures them as people. What sort of communities do they seek? How do they support art making? What are their current concerns and challenges? If you’d like to engage in a conversation and wrestle with these questions, please do write to me ramannandita@gmail.com.

Thread 1: Qiana Mestrich

Qiana Mestrich is a photo-based visual artist and writer from Brooklyn, NY. Founder of the blog Dodge & Burn: Diversity in Photography History, her Namesake Series is on view at the RUSH Arts/Corridor Gallery through May 17, 2014. She graduated from the ICP-Bard’s MFA program in 2013.